


Softie

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Doctor Who Feels, Doctor Who References, First Kiss, M/M, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4022170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for a prompt: "People in the Shatterdome tend to think that Hermann is some sort of emotionless robot. Little do they know, he's actually a colossal softie."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Softie

When the lights went out and the lab was plunged into darkness, Newt shouted every swear word he could think of, followed by, “I was in the _middle_ of something!” 

The emergency lights flickered to life a few seconds later, and Hermann, sitting at his computer terminal, sighed, “Yes, you're the only person in the Shatterdome who had anything important going on, which justifies your use of such foul language.” 

Newt hoped that he might at least find a little consolation in Hermann’s misfortune. “When was the last time you saved?” he said with a grin. 

“I have it set to auto-save every thirty seconds,” Hermann answered smugly. 

Shrugging away his disappointment, Newt hurried to get the kaiju samples off the table and into the refrigeration units. The dim emergency lighting was no good for the work he needed to do, but at least the generator would keep the fridges running until the main power came back on; he wouldn't lose any valuable materials. 

Meanwhile, Hermann retrieved a battery-powered lantern from his quarters, and climbed the ladder in front of his chalkboard with the light in hand. He might not be able to work on his computer, but he could continue with some of his calculations manually. 

Ken, part of the Shatterdome maintenance staff, approached the doorway to the lab, and when he rapped his knuckles on the frame, it made a resounding, hollow sound that rang through the room. “Knock-knock, any nerds in here?” 

“That depends,” Newt replied. “If by 'nerd,' you mean 'person doing the most important work that any human being could possibly be doing right now,' then yes, I am here. But if by 'nerd' you mean just like, a regular nerd, then also yes, because Hermann is here.” 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Ken said with a chuckle. “I'm just making the rounds to remind everyone not to shut themselves into their quarters tonight. If the power stays out, the ventilation system will be out, so there's no airflow into your rooms. You shut the door, you might suffocate.” 

“Noted, thank you,” Hermann said, still scrawling numbers and figures on the chalkboard. 

“Oh, he's up there.” Ken looked up and caught sight of Hermann, and remarked, “Wow, you can't keep that guy from working, can you?” 

Having put away the last of the kaiju entrails, Newt walked over to stand at Ken's side. “I know, man. It's like, GREETINGS HUMAN. I AM HERMANN-BOT. EXECUTING PROGRAM.” 

Ken heard derision in Newt’s voice, but also affection, which made him smirk. “Most people would take any excuse to have a few extra hours off,” he said. 

“Yeah. But he had the chalkboards installed specifically for this type of situation. He heard that the Hong Kong Shatterdome was prone to blackouts. Which is funny, considering this used to be a power station.” 

“Yeah, well, I _used_ to be a gymnast when I was a kid, it doesn't mean I wouldn't break my neck if I tried to do a flyspring today. Well, take it easy. You might be able to kick back, but power outages are my time to shine.” Ken made his way out of the lab and down the corridor, and Newt washed up before retreating to his room. 

Time went by, and the typical hour approached at which Hermann called it a day. He checked his watch and, seeming satisfied with the time it displayed, climbed down the ladder and set the chalk in the tray. He also had some work to do in his room, and was delighted to be able to pursue it in peace. Much of the ambient noise that rumbled through the Shatterdome twenty-four hours a day was gone for the time being, and the place was wonderfully quiet. 

With his door open, however, Hermann soon heard a brief ruckus coming from Newt's room; something scraping along the ground, then the sound of something breaking, and then more shouting and cursing. Moments later, Newt stomped over to Hermann, barging through the door. 

“You could still knock,” Hermann scolded. 

Newt appeared momentarily chastened, but then said with affected nonchalance, “I could do a lot of things. Listen, I was wondering if I can come sit in here with you and read.” He was looking around, taking the room in. Hermann never allowed him in. 

“Why would you want to read in here? Did you do something stupid, like drop your lantern on the ground?” 

“Shut up, Hermann. Hey, what's this?” Newt picked up the top sheet of a stack of papers sitting at Hermann's elbow on the desk. It was typed and double-spaced, and thickly edited in red pen. “This doesn't look like math.” 

“Don't!” was all Hermann could manage to utter, as he snatched the paper from Newt's hands. 

But it was too late. Newt had seen a few of the key words on the page. “Whoa, wait, did that say 'Rose' and 'the Doctor'? Are you writing Doctor Who fanfiction?” 

“It's not fanfiction!” Hermann snapped, but then admitted, “Well technically, I suppose it is, but this is a full-length novel that conforms to all the guidelines for officially licensed Doctor Who published fiction. There's no... _smut_ in it.” 

“I saw the word 'Martha' in there, too. Isn't it a little late to be writing about Ten?” Newt sat down on Hermann's bunk, which was adjacent to the desk in the tiny room. “I mean, I get it if you have a crush on him, everyone did...” 

Hermann swiveled his chair to face Newt, and they were practically knee-to-knee. “It isn't about that!” 

“Okay, then, so what's it about?” 

Hermann's mouth twisted with reluctance. 

“C'mon, dude,” Newt said, “I'm not making fun of you. I love Doctor Who. I really, truly want to know what your story is about.” 

“I wasn't, ah,” Hermann cleared his throat. “I just wasn't happy with the way the second series ended.” 

He stopped there, as if Newt would have let him get away with so vague an answer. But then, he continued, and it became clear that he’d never talked to anyone about it before, and was relieved for the opportunity. (Newt could spot stuff like that easily; he knew all about geeking out about things.) 

“It was well-executed, don’t get me wrong,” Hermann explained, “but it was upsetting to me. I wanted to fix it. And I got this idea, about how maybe, because Rose had been resistant to traveling to the other dimension, that a part of her had remained in the Void, as she was pulled through it. A part of her essence, her spirit. Because she was _dragged_ there. It's like...the difference between lifting a paintbrush from the palette to the canvas, versus dragging it across the table as you go. By the time it gets to the canvas, there's still paint on it, but some of it will get left behind.” 

“So the paint is Rose and the Void is the table. Got it.” 

“Yes, well, so: what if that part of Rose that got left behind when she was dragged through was entirely made up of emotion? And no reason? What if there was this entity in the Void, and all it wanted, all it existed for, was getting back to the Doctor? The Doctor doesn't know anything about this, when the story begins, but what's happening is, he keeps having to come to the rescue in times and places where there are these spatial disturbances. You know, mysterious holes in time and space.” 

“Still with you. Go on.” 

“So, it occurs to the Doctor that the only being capable of creating these disturbances would be someone who had absorbed a sufficient amount of 'time energy.' Like Rose had. That's how she woke up that Dalek, you remember. So eventually he figures out that the shadow of Rose that's still in the Void is punching all these holes in time and space, trying to find the Doctor. It's not really Rose, but it _thinks_ it is, and it has no consideration for the consequences of its actions.” 

“But let me guess: the holes that it punches ultimately allow the real Rose to reunite with the Doctor?” 

Hermann blushed, which is how Newt knew he was right. “That is so romantic, dude! I didn't know you had it in you. But that was all so long ago. Why haven’t you finished it yet?” 

“As I said, I started writing it after series two. Must have been 2006 or 2007. God, that was fifteen years ago, I just realized. Anyway, it was slow going, because of my studies, and it was taking me so long, so many more things happened on the show, like Rose coming from her world to correct the timeline that Donna had created, and then getting that part-human Doctor to take back with her into her world. And then that scene just before he regenerated, where he wished her a happy new year. It was very disheartening.” 

“I would have thought you would have liked that, the two of them getting to meet again.” 

“I thought I would have, too, but when it happened, it annoyed me. I wanted it to happen, but I also didn't. I know that doesn’t make sense” 

“No, it makes perfect sense,” Newt said. “It made their separation less poignant. It didn't mean so much that they lost each other, if they're just gonna keep running into each other every other episode.” 

“Yes, exactly! And the problem was, it was taking me so long to write the book, and then Eleven came along, with the crack in Amy's wall, and that was a lot like what I was writing about, and eventually I just gave it up. The show itself was taking care of everything in my book – though it was doing it in ways I found irritating. And anyway, then it was 2013, and K-Day came, and of course my priorities changed drastically. The story just sat on a portable drive in my parents' house. But earlier this year I asked them to send me the drive because I needed to find a paper I wrote for one of my old physics courses, and I found it on there.” He tapped the stack of papers. “I watched a few episodes again, some of them for the first time since they aired, and I remembered all those things I felt, the reasons why I started writing this in the first place. There's no hope of having it published now, but I guess that doesn't concern me. I'm just writing it for myself.” 

Newt said nothing, and when Hermann looked up at him, he was startled by what he saw: Newt appeared close to tears, and he was swallowing hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing several times as he blinked rapidly. 

Finally, Newt said, “After all this time, you still want them to be together.” 

“Yes,” Hermann answered softly. 

“Just not the way they did it on the show.” Newt smiled weakly, because he didn’t want things to get sad and weird. 

But Hermann plowed ahead with his brutal melancholy. “I want their reunion to be a testament to how much they loved one another,” he said gravely, “not a cheap plot device that piled on guest stars to boost the ratings.” 

Newt stared at the floor and wrung his hands. “Holy crap, dude, I never knew you had those kinds of feelings. I would have thought you wouldn’t have ever enjoyed Doctor Who in the first place, because there was always so much stuff about human emotion saving the day, and that would have gotten in the way of your listening to a British man babble excitedly about science.” 

“Just because I make an effort to preserve some vestige of dignity and professionalism in this place,” Hermann said, swirling his pen in the air to indicate his dismal surroundings, “doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. I just have never, ah, had much in the way of opportunities to express them. I suppose watching that show when I was young and impressionable gave me unrealistic expectations about what romance should be.” 

Newt’s head snapped up, and he said carefully, “You mean like, what’s the use of being with someone, if you’re not saving the world together?” 

“I suppose so.” Hermann could do nothing now, except put his clasped hands on his knees and avert his eyes from Newt. 

“Oh my God,” Newt said, “All this time. If I’d had any idea that you felt that way, I would have…” 

Hermann raised an eyebrow. “You would have what?” 

Suddenly, Newt straightened up and said, “Hermann, let me tell you something!” He spread his knees and leaned forward to grab the edge of Hermann’s chair and roll it closer. Then, he looked Hermann right in the eyes and said, “You know what I think of all this? I think you need a doctor!” 

Without fear or shame, he went for a kiss, planting his lips right on Hermann’s before Hermann could utter so much as a squawk in protest. It was just too perfect a moment, and he was confident; there was no way Hermann was going to wallop him after he used _that_ line. 

Well, okay, he might. But it would be so worth it.

 


End file.
